


Ghost in the Machine

by phoenixflight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode Related, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Haunting, Missing Scene, Season Finale, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27686473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixflight/pseuds/phoenixflight
Summary: After Sam promises to let his brother go, Dean sticks around just to make sure.
Comments: 57
Kudos: 125
Collections: Forever Wincest Fest





	Ghost in the Machine

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](https://wincestpoughkeepsie.tumblr.com/post/635505913895206912) tumblr post.

The pain was fading - shock, Dean thought, because he could still feel Sam’s hands clutching at him, the hot dampness of his tears against Dean’s neck. He couldn’t feel his own fingers or toes anymore, couldn’t move any of his limbs, but he could feel Sam, trembling against him. The need to comfort his brother surged up through Dean like a familiar tide, but he was so tired - he’d just rest his eyes for a moment. 

When he opened them, Sam was still there, the barn and the bodies of the vamps were still there, and a reaper was there. He was a somber-looking older man, close-cropped white hair and dark skin, wearing an undertaker’s dapper suit. Dean swallowed reflexively, and felt no sensation in his throat at all. 

Sam made a noise like a wounded wolf, a sound that hurt Dean worse than getting impaled through the chest, and heaved backwards, lifting Dean - Dean’s body off the piece of bloody rebar and into his arms. Dean had a moment of vertigo as Dean’s perspective stayed in place - his ghostly form or whatever, no longer connected to the corporeal one. If he’d had a stomach, it would have dropped. 

“It is time,” the reaper intoned. “You must come with me.” 

“Hang on,” Dean snapped. Sam staggered back, falling to his knees with Dean half on top of him. 

“Souls should not stay in the mortal world. You will lose yourself, slowly, and become a shadow of anger and pain.” 

“Yeah, yeah, believe me I know, now would you  _ shut up?”  _

Sam was sobbing his name, “Dean, Dean, Dean,” over and over again, clutching his body and rocking back and forth. Dean felt panic well up in the memory of his chest - he knew this moment intimately, from the inside. This was the moment a Winchester did something monumentally, world-endingly stupid. Sam had said it was okay, Sam  _ promised  _ \- but Sam had broken promises before. They both had. 

“This life is no longer for you,” the reaper said. “You must go on.” 

Dean looked at Sam’s contorted face, slick with tears. If Sam was going to try to bring him back, the least Dean could do was haunt his ass. “Thanks but I’ll pass.” He’d seen enough of the afterlife to last him - ha - a lifetime. 

“The consequences…” 

“I’m staying,” he interrupted, “end of story.”

The reaper frowned, and vanished. Dean turned back to his brother. Sam was curled down over him - over his corpse - shuddering with sobs. His hair was hanging in his face, getting snotty and damp. Everything in Dean ached to hold him, to pet his hair back and comfort him. 

He understood why ghosts went mad - watching grief like this, with no way to help… it would burn away the human parts, eventually, just as a natural defense against how much it hurt. Dean considered himself an expert on pain by now, and this was something special. 

Eventually, Sam staggered to his feet, hauling Dean out of the barn and toward the car. Dean’s jeans and boots were dragging through mud, all of that was going to get on the upholstery, not to mention the blood. It took some maneuvering, but both of them were practiced at fitting corpses in the car. Usually it was both of them together, though. It helped to have someone to push while the other person pulled. 

A twig snapped behind them, and both of them spun around. It was the two kids, crouched in the shadow of a hedgerow, wide-eyed and terrified. Dean saw Sam do the mental calculation - the kids needed to get somewhere safe, but putting them in the car with a corpse was a non-starter. If Sam called the cops, he needed to be gone before they showed up, see corpse from exhibit A. Sam gulped a couple of deep breaths, went to rub his hands over his face, remembered the blood at the last second, and shook his head sharply instead. 

He went to the trunk and pulled out one of their emergency flares. “These are like fireworks,” he said, speaking loudly enough that the kids would hear. His voice rasped painfully. “I’ll call the cops, and they’ll be able to see them and find you when they come. You stay here okay? Stay where you can see the flare. The monsters are all gone, I promise. Just stay put, the police will be here soon.” 

He lit the flare and left it on the gravel, then slid into the driver’s seat, pulling out his phone. “I’ve got two kids and two dead kidnappers, at an abandoned barn about 8 miles south of Mapleton off highway 44. I’m lighting road flares now. Kids need help.” He hung up on the dispatcher’s urgent questions. Then he tipped his forehead against the wheel, eyes squeezed shut, another sob wrenched from between his clenched teeth. "Fuck. Goddammit," he whispered. Twisting around over the back of the seat, he pawed at Dean’s pockets, still swearing wetly under his breath. The keys, Dean realized. 

Sam rescued them from Dean’s jacket and shoved them into the ignition, face twisted up, eyes glistening in the dashboard lights as the engine turned over. 

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” Dean asked. Sam didn’t react, and Dean sighed. “Okay Baby,” he said. “It’s up to you. You gotta get him home safe.” He patted her seat reassuringly. His hand went right through. 

At the intersection with the highway, Sam pulled over long enough to light another flare, and got back on the road. It had been near midnight when they’d arrived at the barn - it had to be close to three now. Sam drove with both hands white-knuckled on the wheel, eyes locked on the yellow line. Dean could tell his neck was hurting - it always got sore when he drove locked up and stressed like that. It was such a stupid, small thing to worry about, but Dean couldn’t help thinking about his brother’s neck aching. 

Dawn was breaking by the time they got home. It occurred to Dean to wonder, around the time Sam was pulling up to the garage doors, whether he would even be able to enter the bunker in his current state. But it turned out that with all the ward breaking and reconstructing, and powering up the place to hold forces as powerful as God and Death at bay, they’d gotten a little sloppy in their basic spirit security. 

Sam wrestled his corpse out of the car - Dean spared just one glance for the bloodstains on the seats before following. When Sam shouldered into the bunker, carrying Dean, Miracle came running, claws clicking on the floor. 

He looked up at Sam and whined. “I know, buddy,” Sam croaked, voice wrecked. 

Dean felt his non-existent heart convulse again. The freaking dog… He kept thinking this couldn’t hurt any worse, and he kept being wrong. 

He wasn’t sure where he expected Sam to go first - the library or the dungeon would both be bad news; either of them an indication that Sam was trying to dig up or summon something to bring Dean back. But Sam headed for the showers, dragging Dean behind. 

Dean almost couldn’t watch Sam clean his body. It was an excruciating combination of intimate and embarrassing. Sam dragged his boots and jeans off, leaving his shirts for last. That morning had been laundry day and Dean was wearing an old, threadbare pair of briefs. He thought obscurely that he should have been wearing novelty underwear. At least then he might have made Sam smile one last time. Sam was crying, silently now, as he turned on a tap and wetted a washcloth. Blood swirled slowly on the white tiles. 

Out of all the times he’d lost Sam, Dean had only had to do this once, the very first time, and he was grateful for that. Once was plenty. 

He and Bobby had stripped Sam’s sticky clothes off him, wiped the mud and congealed blood from his torso - Dean had staggered to the bathroom to be sick when Bobby turned Sam over to clean up his back, even though he’d seen more gruesome death by that age than most career soldiers. They’d washed and dried his stupid, floppy hair that had gotten all lanky with filth. Dean remembered running his fingers through it, smoothing down where it had gotten all frizzy with the toweling. Remembered wondering how Sam dealt with the hassle every time he showered, and then realizing he was never going to get a chance to tease him for it. 

“Don’t you think it’s time?” Bobby had said at least two days later - he hadn’t been tracking time very well - and Dean had lashed out, not ready, never ready to lose Sam. It was selfish - hell, Dean had never pretended to be anything else in his heart of hearts when it came to his brother - but he was almost relieved that it had gone this way. If Sam had kicked the bucket first, Dean thought he might have been strong enough not to bring Sam back, but he wouldn’t have been strong enough to stop himself from following right after, at the first opportunity. 

Sam would be though, _had_ to be. At some point Sam had given up dreaming of anything other than their life, but Dean knew, deep down, that Sam never wanted to die hunting. 

It was different for Dean. He’d been on borrowed time since he was 26, electrocuted in a flooded basement, hunting some creature he couldn’t even remember now. You’d think your first time would stick with you; Dean could still remember the freckles on the first girl he’d ever kissed, but maybe dying wasn’t like sex. Most people didn’t get to practice. And he’d always known that if he survived the drama of the apocalypses, survived God and God’s sister, survived angels and demons, then he was going to go out like he had that very first time - unglamorous and unexpected. 

Sam had finished washing him. Rigor mortis was setting in strongly, and his limbs were becoming difficult to manipulate. Sam used a bath towel as a sling under his arms to drag him naked out of the shower and down the hall. The indignities of being dead abounded. Miracle followed at their heels, snuffling at Dean’s bare feet and whining again. 

On impulse, Dean bent to try to pet him, and Miracle put his ears back, whimpering. Sam glanced up. “Me too, Miracle. Me too.” 

Missing something like that could get you killed on a hunt - not that Dean had a leg to stand on there anymore. He didn’t have legs to stand on, period. But he could let Sam off the hook for having other things on his mind. There hadn’t been any electrical flickers or misted breath from cold patches. Ghosts’ power came from their rage and hurt, growing as they lost their grip on reality. Dean wondered what he was hanging around for if he wouldn’t be able to do so much as blow out a candle, if Sam did try some kind of ritual. Or maybe a ritual would make him angry enough to power up. Pissing off Dean had always been one of Sam’s superpowers. 

Sam paused outside Dean’s room, but passed it by, stopping instead at his own room to strip the top sheet off the bed. 

There was a walk-in cool room off the kitchen that they didn’t use for anything much. Dean had been considering experimenting with aging cheese, if he could figure out a way to do it that he brother wouldn’t tease him for mercilessly. When Sam left his body in the middle of the floor, wrapped in the blanket, he wanted to bitch about food safety but it wasn’t as if his cheese project was going anywhere now, and it wasn’t the first time they’d stored a corpse in here. He had a sneaking suspicion that the Men of Letters had used it for the same purpose sometimes. 

On his way back from the kitchen, Sam paused at the door to the library. “Don’t you dare,” Dean growled, and Sam slammed his fist against the wall, swearing. Shaking out his knuckles, Sam continued down the hall to his room, and Dean breathed out. They weren’t in the clear yet, but Sammy was holding strong. 

In his room, Sam collapsed on his bed like all his strings and been cut. He patted the mattress for Miracle to jump up, even though he was always so fussy about dog hair on his pillow. It was the first time in a long time Dean had listened to his brother cry himself to sleep, but the feeling of helplessness was just as bad as he remembered. 

It was the story of their lives that they already had wood cut for a pyre. Sam moved slowly as he built it up, Miracle getting anxiously underfoot. Again this was a task they’d always shared, with one another and with others over the years. So many goodbyes. So many thank yous. 

It was hard to look at the wrapped corpse in the center of the pyre Sam was building. It was equally hard to look at Sam. Instead Dean looked around at the little clearing, the lush trees, the little path back to the bunker, the blue sky above, and wondered what was next, after everything. Funny how as one of the world’s two foremost experts on the afterlife, he couldn’t even begin to guess what was waiting for him. 

Dean hadn’t quite let himself believe that Sam was really going to go through with it, even after Sam had doused the corpse in gasoline - that would be a mess to clean up if he changed his mind - not even when Sam flicked the lighter. Sam stood there in silence, Miracle sitting dejected and confused by his feet, small flame burning in his hand. His face was stony but his eyes were bright with tears. “C’mon, Sammy,” Dean murmured. “Moment of truth.” 

Sam’s hand flicked out. The pyre caught with a _whoomph_ , and Dean’s breath caught too - relief and pride so strong it felt like he was about to be consumed with it, engulfed like the fire. 

He braced himself for pain - he’d seen plenty of ghosts scream as their bones went up in flames. But maybe the screams were more of anger, because he only felt a vague tingling starting in his toes. The world grayed out, as if it were turning to smoke rather than the reverse. The last thing Dean saw was his brother’s face, drawn with grief and weariness, and he thought,  _ yes, Sammy. You can do it.  _

When he opened his eyes, the sky was blue. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love! [Reblog on tumblr here.](https://nevergettingoverwincest.tumblr.com/post/635598302526701568/ghost-in-the-machine-missing-scene)


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